I wanted to think a little bit about Nathan’s baller move at the end of Wednesday’s lecture, when he bought something in front of all of us and asked, “what did I just touch?” Honestly, I don’t have a very good answer to that question. But on a tangent: I was taken with just how quick and easy it truly is to buy something on Amazon. It took about 20 seconds. To me this ties in with the whole “media is the message” concept, the idea that the mode of transmission changes us. If we apply that idea not just to art / media / advertising, but also to user-driven choices like shopping, I think it still holds. The fact that you can buy something so smoothly and easily on Amazon can change the way you shop and spend money. Everyone knows this, most of all Amazon, which is wholly committed to making its shopping experience as streamlined and convenient as possible. In Amazon’s ideal world, you could buy something on Amazon and have it in your hands quicker than if you actually went out to a physical store—oh, wait: http://www.wired.com/2014/12/prime-now/. If the TV killed the public square and moved it indoors, in a bastardization of McQuire’s point, maybe the internet is now doing the same to the public market (even as it kills the TV). There’s probably something about navigable space in there—the replacement of physical shops, markets, malls, with online markets and the resultant change in consumer behavior—but I’m not sure how to articulate it. Anyway, I’m interested in how our consumption habits change as companies like Amazon slowly chip away at the obstacles of online shopping. This isn’t a great blog post but I’m super late for my next thing so I have to run.
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